Monday, July 10, 2006

Mondays with Maida - Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Cookies

Another plain, but very good cookie. The twist here is that raw sugar is used, which contributes to the crunchy, crumbly texture of the cookies.

I used a natural style peanut butter again for these cookies. I made these once before and remember them having a firmer (not so crumbly) texture. Either I'm remembering wrong, or possibly the peanut butter I used made the difference. It was the same variety, it's just that it had been hanging around longer. If you've ever bought this type of peanut butter, you know that the oil separates out with time. You're supposed to stir it back in, but I always blot it with a paper towel or pour it off. I wind up with some very solid peanut butter (not exactly spreadable!), but I rationalize that it's healthier since it's lower in fat. Next time I'd be tempted to cut back on the butter a little to see what happens, that is unless I've got some old peanut butter hanging around!

Update - I just remembered the other difference. I was out of unsalted butter and used salted butter. Hmmm...

These cookies are a little difficult to slice - they tend to crumble on the bottom edge - but they can easily be mended with your fingers. In spite of these slicing woes, they always seem to bake up to near-perfect circles.

The panel was lukewarm on these cookies, but they did have their fans.

Suzanne: "Whole wheat must mean that the cookie is healthy and therefore we can have as many as we want. I also like anything with peanut butter in them and I like the crunchy texture. Even though the cookie was healthy, had peanut butter and was crunchy, it wasn’t anything special so I gave it a rating of 3. Rating- 3.0"

Cathy- Thank you for writing this blog! I absolutely enjoy the thourough, methodological way you are going through the cookbook page by page, cookie by cookie, following each recipe precisely so that it's easier to see what went wrong- what puts the blog over the top of the excellence scale for me though is that you include nutrition information for each and every recipe you post. Do you calculate the nutrition yourself, or does Maida do it for you? Now, the other thought I had was that I love your posts, but I need recipes to tide me over in between Mondays!! I went through many of your "favorite places" links, but I couldn't find anyone who even bothered with nutrition information let alone is half as precise as you are (no disrespect intended to those other bloggers, of course). So in your web travels, have you come across many other blogs like yours, with nutrition information and careful, precise measurement? Doesn't even need to be just desserts, in fact might even prefer savory dishes to counterbalance all the fantastic cookies I need to try now, courtesy of you and Maida :) Again, thanks ever so much for your blog;Sincerely, Elijah

Hi Jocelyn - thanks! I like peanut butter too and have enjoyed trying a couple of different takes on the peanut butter cookie.

Thanks Nic! I don't think I'd ever had a crunchy peanut butter cookie until I first tried this one, but turns out I love them too!

Hi Elijah - thanks so much! I use some software called Living Cookbook. You enter your recipe, link each ingredient to one in the ingredient database, and then click a button and voila - nutrition info! It's not very expensive and I find it easy to use. I know I've seen some nutrition information on other blogs - the one that comes to mind is Words to Eat By.

That natural style of pb reminds me so much of my mother---I remember how she insisted on buying organic, natural products as much as possible, no matter if it was a wee bit of an inconvenience to stir the separated oil back into the pb!

RYC: About the sage, yes they are tenacious buggers and seem to survive above all else!

Hi Rowena! That's funny - I don't think my mom has ever seen any appeal in organics. In her mind it's a gimic - higher priced but inferior quality (i.e. bug holes, etc.). And I have to admit, if the only organic produce I ever saw was that offered in the grocery store, I'd be of like mind!

Hi Jenjen! The cookies don't taste of whole wheat in my opinion. They use whole wheat pastry flour, which I think isn't as coarse as regular ww flour, and the other ingredients (i.e., raw sugar and peanut butter) may mask any textural differences caused by the ww flour.

Hi Cathy! Happen to chance upon yr blog through nic's. Wow..these cookies look great! And its whole wheat too! DO you mind sharing the recipe with me? In Singapore i am not able to get hold of this cookery book. thanks..god bless yr wonderful hands!

About Me

My name is Cathy and I live in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC in the USA. I love to cook, but have had a tendency to do it strictly by the book. I love to eat too, but have an unfortunately long list of dislikes. It's time for a change.